Brits to lead Chicago's Music of the Baroque

August 02, 2002|By John von Rhein, Tribune music critic.

Chicago's Music of the Baroque will turn on a British axis now that the ensemble has named two highly regarded English conductors, Jane Glover and Nicholas Kraemer, as its music director and principal guest conductor, respectively.

Glover's four-year contract will be effective immediately. She is scheduled to conduct four MOB programs each season, beginning in 2003-04 and running through 2005-06. Kraemer's three-year contract will take effect in 2003-04 when he will direct one or two programs each season.

The appointments end an international search by the MOB board of directors to find a successor to the group's founder and longtime music director, Thomas Wikman. Both Glover and Kraemer scored high with MOB musicians, audiences and press in their public auditions for their posts last season, according to Karen Fishman, MOB executive director.

Glover made her podium debut with MOB in February when she led choral and orchestral works by Haydn and Mozart. She is to open the coming MOB season in September with three performances of Handel's oratorio, "Alexander's Feast." Previous commitments will prevent her from returning to MOB until the following year. Kraemer is scheduled to lead next season's final MOB concerts, an all-Classical program, in May.

"Our performance history is solidly built on the pillars of the Baroque repertory. Jane will continue to build on that foundation, with a deep understanding of the repertory and with her unique stylistic insights," Fishman said of Glover, who is former director of the London Mozart Players.

Reached by phone in New London, Conn., where she is conducting Haydn and Mozart at the Harkness Festival, the 53-year-old Glover said she is "absolutely thrilled" to be leading "this great core of fantastic players and singers, with their wonderful repertory base."

Although she said it's too early for her to discuss specifics, Glover said she hopes to expand MOB's repertory to include "a broader definition of the term Baroque" as well as possibly introducing period-instrument performances into the MOB mix. (All MOB concerts have been given on modern instruments.)

"We shall peel off other layers of the onion every time we revisit this repertory. It will be a wonderful journey together," she said.

As it turns out, Glover and Kraemer are longtime friends and colleagues, having served together as members of the music staff at England's Glyndebourne Festival during the early 1980s.

Their tenure also coincided with Brian Dickie's term as general director of Glyndebourne, which ran from 1981 to 1988.

Dickie has since taken over as general director of Chicago Opera Theater, where Glover has conducted acclaimed productions of Monteverdi's "Orfeo" in 2000 (she and COT reprised their successful show last April at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) in 2000 and Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" last February.

She will preside over Diane Paulus' new staging of Britten's "The Turn of the Screw" with COT in March 2003.

Glover declined to speculate whether her establishing a working base in Chicago will open the door to collaborations between Music of the Baroque and Chicago Opera Theater. But she noted that since both groups will share performance space, as of 2004, at the Chicago Music and Dance Theatre now being built at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, the idea of joint artistic efforts is "an appealing possibility."

"Chicago is a city I've always adored and taken great energy from," she said. "I'm happy my American base will be in such a great city."